we heard the river stem its flow
by LuminaCarina
Summary: Suzuha time travels.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Steins;Gate**

 **Summary:** Suzuha time travels.

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They told you: you have your mother's voice, your mother's face, your mother's grace, your mother's kindness. They told you: you are your mother as she was in her youth.

You are Suzuha, but they call you Amane-chan.

They call your mother Amane-san.

''Amane-san, you have a lovely daughter! Smile, Amane-chan, a pretty girl like you shouldn't frown!''

You stare in the mirror, trace your nose. Is this where your father shines through? It would be almost anticlimactic, to have inherited your father's nose, of all those other virtues he had embodied. You don't know who he is—indeed, your mother is infuriatingly careful not to give you any hints—but you need only think about the time machine (but no, you aren't supposed to even think about it, mother said, never ever mention it to anyone ever, because if SERN—) to know what he was like; a brilliant man, with none to rival him, a genius that Suzuha will never live up to. You trace your nose. If this little bump of cartilage and flesh is all you have left of him, you will treasure it.

(When you were little, you used to compare your eyes to your mother's: green and blue. _Papa_ , you mouthed to yourself, _papa, do I have your eyes?_

 _No_ , mother said, _you have grandma's eyes, sweetheart, see, look at the photo_ —

Sometimes, you think: I have my father's eyes. But that is a lie, and you know it, because there's a photo of a brown-haired, green-eyed woman framed and stored in your mother's bag, always near in case you have to move house on SERN's cruel whim.)

This is the truth: SERN will kill you. SERN will kill your mother. SERN has killed your father. SERN has killed Okabe Rintarou. SERN will kill you and steal the legacy your father left you, and if they don't wreck it, they will use it to desecrate everything your father spent a lifetime working for.

(You were nine. ''Mama, why do we have to leave? Mama, I want to stay! I have a friend now—mama, I don't want to leave, mama…''

Okabe Rintarou and his resistance hacked into SERN and destroyed something valuable, some information… SERN will not allow the insult to rest. All known resistance members—kill on sight—or, in case of select few like Okabe Rintarou himself, are to be captured. Through the lens of your life, this means you must leave Kyoto as a whole, and move to some other place.

You are a member of the resistance. Your name is on that list, of only because your mother's name is, like your father's was, before his death.

Then, you were eleven, and Okabe Rintarou was dead. You hated him for so long, for ruining your life, and now that he is gone, you realise that he was in the right all along. The resistance becomes your life.)

(Your mother's corpse is half floating in the water, flakes of salt in her hair where her head has washed up ashore, and her hair is like tentacles. You used to brush that hair and count aloud from one to one hundred. You used to sulk in envy that your own hair is so unruly and coarse.)

SERN will kill the world.

And then you are eighteen, and you are fleeing for your life. You would like to say that you left for some grand goal like saving the future—and that's your story and you're sticking to it; the future is a bloated animal, dead despite not knowing it yet, and you will heal the wounds before they fester, and when they ask, which you know they will, you will say you did it for the world, for your father, for the memory of your mother's hair—you left to save your life.

You count the names of your friends on two hands. On one, the names of those dead, and you mourn that you don't have six fingers so that they all might fit, and on the other you wish you could cut off the last two so that you don't have to say: _I can count my friends on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left over_. Lao Ren, Chiyosame, Akita. You don't know where they are, and you hope they never find out where you are.

(But they are dead, unmade, you unravelled the energy from their souls yourself. Suzuha, destroyer of worlds, killer of friends, saviour of the future. But will it be a future you will want, when you forget all that has made you who you are, and _Lao Ren, Chiyosame, Akita_ means nothing but a collection of stuttered syllables, consonants running into each other, unfamiliar? Will it be home, when no one calls you Amane-chan again, and you are remodelled into some other girl, maybe not a girl at all, maybe you'll wink out of existence wholly, because your mother never met your father and the specific combination of genes that code your soul are never shuffled together? Will it be you, when you no longer have your father's nose?)

The time machine whirls—

The world shudders—

There is land again. There is gravity.

There is SERN, because you are a selfish, selfish monster, because you want to know: papa, do I have your nose? Do I have your eyes, papa, or was it all in my head all along?

There is a bike, and a job, and food on the market that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and is fresh and plentiful to boot. There is Nae, pretty and young and so terribly trusting. The first lesson your mother taught you: don't believe what strangers tell you, never give your true name, never make eye contact. Nae knows none of that.

And then, there is Okabe Rintarou, and he is like nothing you have ever known.

 _There was a John Titor ten years ago, he told the world about time travel_. Ten years ago… there was a world where you weren't selfish, it seems. But oh, how little regret you feel. Okabe Rintarou is the messiah, you are sure. You know this in your heart of hearts, somewhere not even your father's memory reaches.

(You remember: shaggy hair, unshaven face, dirty fingernails, inhuman screeching in the distance when they hunted him down like a dog and filled him with lead, to use a phrase you learnt from a mafia-themed novella, and your mother's sobs when she saw the clip SERN played in a loop on the TV, over and over and over again, because the resistance just lost its last founding member, and Kurisu Makise is cold as she appears and says, ''This is what happens to traitors, this is what will happen to the resistance.''

You remember: IBN 5100, and FG 204, 2nd Edition, Ver. 2.31, and you think: I can do this. I can make this happen.)

Okarin, they call him, and Makise Kurisu trails after him like a lost puppy. And there are other people, people you don't know because SERN killed them, or Makise Kurisu did—really, they're one and the same, in the end—and you learn to love them like you love Nae. Mayushi, Daru, Rukako-san, they are humans, with skills and hopes and loves and lives all their own, and you weren't ready for this. You really weren't. You still aren't. How are you supposed to find your father if you can't even get over the existence of a few random strangers?

But, Okabe Rintarou. Hououin Kyouma, he calls himself. You've never heard that name before, though, you were still a child when Okabe Rintarou's name was spoken in your hearing distance with anything but disdain and sadistic glee.

He is making a time machine. He has already made one, and he is making another, and he will change the world. He is a genius not even your father was, and you think: I wish you hadn't died, maybe you would've succeeded where I'll fail, maybe-maybe-maybe. You are afraid of him, almost as much as you are in awe of him.

(Part-time Warrior, he calls you, and when night falls and you huddle down to sleep in the small apartment you rented from a frail old lady with your mother's kindness, you want to cry because of how truthful it is. You are no saviour, you cannot even save yourself, and you work at saving the world only half the time. The other half, you are fiddling with your bike, laughing with Nae, eavesdropping on Makise Kurisu's teenage counterpart—she has round cheeks, her hair is red, she wears baggy jackets, she blusters and blushes and, when she thinks nobody is watching, she stares at Okabe Rintarou with such puzzlement in her eyes, like a monk who has achieved enlightenment but can't quite believe it was so easy—you freak out about the past.

There is food on shelves in the shops, all clean and fresh and cheap. There are children on the streets, loud and carefree. There is soap, shoes that fit, flowering trees lining the roads, no one is checking the weapons market. This is utopia, you think. Why would anyone seek to change it when it's already so perfect?

Remember: 0.337187%. Overcome it.

 _How_?)

SERN is watching. You forget this.

You forget this, and you hate yourself more than you ever did. Okabe Rintarou's little group of misfits and crazies is turning on one another. Shining Finger, he calls her. Moeka. SERN spy—ironically, it isn't Makise Kurisu. You feel so useless.

Because Okabe Rintarou has time travelled who knows how many times, and Shiina Mayuri is fated to die, and _they know when you are from, they know and they don't care beyond it being proof of SERN's deceit, they know and they admire you_. Daru helps you fix the time machine.

You tell him: it only goes one way, only to the past, my father didn't have the time to fix it before he died. He tells you: are you sure you want to go? Someone can go with you, you don't have to make the trip alone.

He feels familiar, like he was important in some other world line, but you don't want to know in what way. You have failed in finding your father, the pin led you nowhere. You will not fail this too, because Okabe Rintarou and the other lab members believe in you, and Makise Kurisu isn't so bad, in this time, in this world. She's a friend, much as you loathe to admit it.

IBN 5100.

0.337187%.

FG 204, 2nd Edition, Ver. 2.31.

Oh.

(He has felt familiar before. His eyes are green; you want to crow in triumph because you knew it all along, you have your father's eyes and your father's nose and he is so clever, so brilliant, even if he does pale before the shining prophet that is Okabe Rintarou—Okarin, you wish you could say, Okarin, who is your dear friend—he is yours. And you are his, for this one moment before you give him up like you've given up Lao Ren and Chiyosame and Akita and your mother and everyone you have ever cared about.)

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Here's another thing to remember: 0.409431%.

What does it mean?

(You love Yuugo, he is important, he is needed…

Oh.

 _Oh_ , but you are a failure to the end.)

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Okabe Rintarou-sama, I have failed. I have failed. I have failed. I have failed. I have failed…

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In another world line, there is this: Suzu-chan, who has brown hair like her mama and green eyes like her papa, and she is not you. She doesn't recognise _Lao Ren, Chiyosame, Akita_. She isn't afraid of Aunt Christina—pardon, Aunt Kurisu. But she is happy.

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End file.
